On the Feast of the Dormition of the Most Holy Theotokos, Patriarch Sviatoslav of the UGCC made a pilgrimage to the Univ Lavra in the Lviv region.
This is reported by the UGCC website.
Addressing the faithful, His Beatitude Sviatoslav recalled how the large-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine began and thanked the Mother of God for saving lives.
"Dear brothers and sisters in Christ," the Patriarch said, "I came here to thank you for saving my life. The fact that I'm alive between you today is a miracle. What was happening in Kyiv half a year ago is hard to describe. The fact that we are alive is a miracle. The fact that our capital has withstood, we now feel as a special prayer for the intercession of the Most Pure Virgin Mary."
"In Kyiv, we believe that as long as there is Oranta in Sofia, the city will stand and be invincible. Therefore, I want to express my gratitude to the Mother of God for saving our souls from death," the Patriarch said.
Patriarch Sviatoslav recalled the beginning of the war: "It is difficult to understand and express it, but Russian troops stopped 20 kilometers from the Patriarchal Cathedral. The front line really separated life from death. We heard explosions and even learned to distinguish between the types of weapons that explode. In cities known all over the world, in Irpen and Bucha, we saw mountains of corpses on the streets that no one cleaned. I stood on the edge of a mass grave and saw young people with their hands tied and thrown at each other. At that moment, we realized that human baseness and cowardice are absolute madness."
The head of the UGCC noted that we are winning and will win thanks to the generosity of Ukrainians. The military, at the cost of their own lives, generously gave everything to save Ukraine. We saw doctors who performed complex operations under bombs. They risked their lives to save someone else's life.
"There, more than anywhere else, you understand that the Ukrainian people will win because we are bigger in the soul than the enemy, morally and spiritually higher. To win, it is not enough to have good and modern weapons. I was also struck by the generosity of Ukrainians when the Russians did not want to take their soldiers, and our people created an opportunity for their relatives to find them," the Bishop said.
"We ask today: O Mother of God, you who pass from Earth to heaven on this day, pray for us, for through your prayers you save our souls from death. Embrace with your maternal care all those who face death: our soldiers at the front, the wounded, the prisoners. Embrace with your motherly love all those who find themselves in the temporarily occupied territories. Make us generous to those who have left their homes and are seeking our mercy today. Mother of God, under your protection Ukraine is invincible, for you deliver our souls from death with your prayers," Patriarch Sviatoslav of the UGCC asked.